EDDIE VEDDER SAVED ME FROM A CULT

Not one of those fun tantric sex ones, either.
No. I was 14 years old when lured inside a temple
of dogs, acceptance-seeking adolescents,

who hadn’t yet discovered drugs,
so sought instead nirvana
at a Pentecostal church. This was the year of fitting in

Guess Jeans, eating fat-free Yoplait, gossiping
on the band room steps, and comparing
my thighs to those of every Alice in crash diet

chains. The year of privately practicing pentatonic
scales on my used Ovation with the amp turned low.
This was the year I, a girl

who had never been kissed, signed a red
index card, vowing to abstain
from sex until marriage

even though all I wanted
was to bone every Josh who made up the hormone
of Nordic blond teenage boys tambourining

on stage in a church basement with sounds, rock n roll
adjacent. Tall boy arms cradled
a bass, stocky viking slouched at a trap set smacking

drum sticks, and a bandana-wearing singer’s hands caressed
a Stratocaster I wished were my face.
Every Wednesday night I exalted

this junior high temptation trinity. Crossed
my fingers I might flirt, prayed I’d find the right
words to make just one Josh notice

me, become my boyfriend, take to me the movies
where we could speak in tongues.
And if it was not god’s will,

for me to experience love, holy mother
of Mary Janes, could I at least possess
the same confidence as adolescent boys in a Christian band?

Who, even after strumming a wrong
chord or missing a beat, still smiled at the audience, a flock
of meat puppets. Instead, I meekly

played Led Zeppelin in my parent’s basement,
an empty soundgarden. In the nine months I attended youth
group I played “Enter Sandman” 99 times but spoke to only one male:

Pastor Bill, a thirty-year-old who had moved to my hometown
in North Dakota from Seattle to save confused
Midwestern teenagers. To Pastor Bill, grunge rock Mecca

was Babylon and Eddie Vedder, satan’s minion. To prove
my devotion to god, he requested I hand over my CDs as an offering.
Sacrificial lambs. Like Job, I deliberated.

Listened to Animal searching for blasphemy.
Every riff, a revelation.
Listened to DC Talk, gifted from the pastor,

searching for redemption.
If indie rock were so evil,
why was it the only thing that made me feel alive?  

If god were so great,
heavens to betsy,
why did he suck

so hard at lyrics?
Like attempting to learn the solo from “Free
Bird,” I became bored with church, forsook

Pastor Bill and the chorus of Joshes,
surrendered my hot pink Lisa Frank-styled teen bible
for rock n roll, drugs, and sex, which entered my life

in that order. Substituted writing vows of abstinence
in my teens for writing down my number in my twenties
on beverage napkins in bars with jukeboxes

singing “Yellow Ledbetter,” turning to troubled musicians
I’d later have premarital sex with
because I finally found a compelling

opening line: let me tell you the story
of how Eddie Vedder saved
me from a cult.